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Could Vibrating Mattress Help Premature Babies Breathe Easier?

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - For some babies, especially those born prematurely, breathing is not automatic.

Their brains simply forget to remind them to do it.

Some researchers say they've come up with a potentially life-saving solution, but not all doctors are sold on it.

Baby Max came into the world much sooner than anyone expected.

"He was two months early. He was 3 pounds and 2 ounces and he was in the NICU for 32 days," Molly Wylie said.

Like many preemies, Max would stop breathing for short periods of time without warning.

"The first couple of times its terrifying because you have no idea what happens, the alarms are going off," Wylie said.

"It is where premature babies hold their breath and don't breathe regularly for someplace up to 15 or 20 seconds. And sometimes, that's associated with their heart rate going lower, and with their oxygen levels going lower," West Penn Hospital Neonatologist Dr. Alan Lantzy said.

The current standard treatment is caffeine.

"Kind of like us having an espresso in the middle of the afternoon. To kind of stimulate your breathing pattern, increases your heart rate. And caffeine is pretty safe," Dr. Lantzy said.

However, a possible new treatment for this common, but serious condition has now been tested at a hospital in Boston.

It's a concept neonatologist Dr. Lantzy is familiar with.

"It's an old idea," Dr. Lantzy said. "We know that tactile stimulation works, because that's what we do. Touch the baby, 'Hey, Jackson, wake up.'"

A vibrating crib mattress is the brainchild of a neurologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

A speaker hidden inside delivers soft vibrations. It's slight, but enough to trigger the baby's brain.

The mattress was used by three dozen babies in Massachusetts. And the number of times they momentarily stopped breathing was cut in half. It makes sense as an idea, but previous research on similar devices showed they really didn't help.

A large review of all the research done on babies getting a vibrating bed or not showed no difference in breath holding, heart slowing, or neurologic outcome at one year.

"You can't do this forever on kids. Most of the kids, by the time you get to be 35, 36, 37 weeks gestation, that part of their brain that was immature has matured. That's why the vast majority of our preemies don't go home on caffeine, don't' go home on home monitors, and are perfectly healthy," Dr. Lantzy said.

The developer has an even bigger dream, far down the road, to offer in-home prevention of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

"I'm not sure if that's a market ploy to sell a lot more full-term ones than you could sell to neonatal units around the country, or whether there would be some justification. But, I have strong reservations of whether it would be applicable to every baby that's taken home from the hospital," Dr. Lantzy said.

With Max well past his early struggle, his parents are breathing easier.

"It took a while for him to outgrow his prematurity, but now he's thriving," Wylie said.

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